Manufacturing giant Unilever is rebranding its IT professionals as ‘business partners’ in an effort to involve them in business decision-making.

The company’s director of IT excellence, Daryl Beck, said that with businesses outsourcing support and development roles, modern IT staff needed a different skill-set.

"IT business partners now need skills such as supplier relationship management, facilitation and communication, as well as consultation skills not usually associated with the traditional IT professional's role," he said. "We have started to see a positive change in the image of IT and IT having an influence in the business.”

The company has so far put 300 of its European IT staff through a specialised programme, which includes training in relationship management, consulting, change management and personal development, and hopes to extend it to America.

Beck said the company is trying to get the programme accredited with an industry body, which will include exams and an assessment by business, peers and managers.

The company has also implemented an internal browser-based IT career framework - based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age from BCS - that allows employees to access their profiles and compare their skills to those required for potential roles, encouraging them to enroll in training programs and boost their skills.

"It is all about enabling Unilever to gain competitive advantage through IT,” Beck said. “For the members of the IT team it is about having the right qualifications, being professional, and enabling the business to move forward."

However, Beck admitted that it was a challenge to convince employees to adopt the system.

"It is not just a sheet of profiles, it is a change programme. People do not like change, and the biggest challenge is convincing people this is what they should be using,” he said.

Further reading:

Towards business alignment IT organisations are striving to close the gap between themselves and the business. So which approaches work?

IT alignment remains a pain point There needs to be board-level support if IT alignment is to make a substantive impact on the bottom line.

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